With the growth in network connectivity, it is increasingly important to maximize the utilization of available resources such as storage and network bandwidth. The consumption of multimedia data (e.g., audio, video, graphics, etc.) on various network-enabled devices is only adding to the demands being placed on these resources. One skilled in the art will recognize that multimedia data is information-intensive when compared to other data types and requires substantially more storage and transmission resources. In this regard, data networks are increasingly being relied on for the transmission of multimedia data such as audio (telephone calls, streaming music, Podcasts, etc.) and video data (television, movies, video conferences, etc.), just to name a few. The continued growth and the utility of data networks (i.e., the Internet, cellular networks, etc.) may depend, at least in part, on the ability to more efficiently transmit and store data.
Data compression refers to the application of one or more processes that reduce the amount of space and/or bandwidth used in storing and/or transmitting data. For example, a data compression process may identify and reduce the redundancy of bits (or other information unit) in a multimedia file or stream. The compression process translates or encodes the data from an original representation into an encoded format that is more compact. A smaller amount of information is used to represent the data in the encoded format thereby conserving storage and transmission resources. To decode the data, a decoding process is applied that returns the data into its original format. In the interest of connectivity and efficiency, most systems exchange multimedia data such as digital video and audio streams in a compressed format. Accordingly, achieving improved compression rates allows these systems to better utilize computer resources and network infrastructure.